What Ward Councils & 2 Lost College Students Have in Common

If you’ve attended a ward council lately, you know that "to the rescue" isn’t just President Thomas S. Monson’s personal mantra. It’s become a motto for many members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

During a recent visit to a ward council — the church's leadership meeting — in a neighboring congregation to my own, I was taken at how the agenda was focused on activation, not activities. They didn’t check boxes on a form. They checked on the needs of their brothers and sisters.

And it surely wasn’t about numbers. It was about names.

As I listened to these inspired leaders counsel about how best to serve one another, including how to lovingly rescue those in need, my mind wandered from our small room in a church to my childhood home.

It was 1986, and I was growing up in the "sticks" outside Charlottesville, Virginia. I'm the youngest of four and my older sister Terilynne was home from Brigham Young University for the summer. Near the end of her break, one of her roommates and best friends, Lisa, flew east and visited for a week.